An Action Figure Waiting to Happen

I want to talk about a hero. Not just any hero, but a Celtic hero. Not just any Celtic hero, but THE Celtic Hero. Cu Chulainn. A man named after a dog.

We'll talk more about this guy tomorrow in our synchroblog of Journey to the Otherworld. But for now, I want to tell you why I think this guy needs a cartoon movie and an action figure. He has a battle rage.

Now, I'm not talking about the Norse beserkers, who dressed in bear skins and believed in battle that they became a bear. I'm talking about a battle rage of mythic proportions! During his battle rage:

• his calves and heels turned around to the front (that's bad on the knees!)
• his body trembles
• one eye recedes
• one eye stands out huge and red (no Visine to help back then)

You would think that would be enough to stop a foe in his tracks, you know with legs all backwards and eyes looking funky, but that is not all. As I said, this is mythic:

• his hair bristles and each hair has a drop of blood on it (and you thought you knew what a bad hair day was)
• from the top of his head shoots a column of dark blood
• from his forehead shines the hero's light

He would get into such a frenzy that he could not calm down. It took 150 naked women and a vat of water to cool him back to his normal state. A student once asked me why they needed to be naked. All the other guys in the class looked at him like he was crazy.

Now, imagine the Cu Chulainn action figure. Press a button and his body vibrates. The legs are multi-jointed so they can be turned around backwards. The body of the figure can have liquid in it so that when you squeeze it, the hair must go up, one eye will bulge out, and there can be a little red pack that stands up off the top of his head. Oh, and just like a glow worm, when held, his head will light up. He'll be every little boy's best friend. No monsters going to be coming out of the closet with little Cu on duty.

Oh yeah, the 150 naked women accessory will be sold separately!

Disney Mythology part II

Once you get past that big golf ball at Epcot, you enter the world showcase, which (sadly enough) is devoid of Ancient Greece. It does, however, have a large Aztec pyramid sitting in the Mexico section. I took this picture on the outside of the pyramid. What you cannot see is the snakes running up the stairs beside the the picture.



The guy in this picture, from what I can figure from my own thinking and from what I've researched on it, is the most famous of all Aztec gods, Quetzalcoatl, a creator god and a sky god. If you want to know how to correctly pronounce his name, you need to go to http://weber.ucsd.edu/~anthclub/quetzalcoatl/pronoun.htm#pronunciation and learn how to pronounce Nahuatl words. If not, you can refer to him by one of his major titles - Feathered Serpent and Precious Twin.

The Feathered Serpent name comes from quetzal which is a type of bird and coatl which means snake or serpent.

The Precious Twin comes from being, well, a twin. His brother's name is Black Tezcatlipoca so just to make it hard on young Aztec students, Quetzalcoatl also goes by White Tezcatlipoca. Venus is associated with them When Venus is seen at night (which it barely is now, low in the west right after sunset), it is Black Tezcatlipoca. When Venus is seen in the morning, it is Quetzalcoatl.


This pyramid is inside the pyramid at Epcot center. It is a Mayan pyramid. I'll need to do more study to learn the difference between the two. It is by far the best place in the world showcase at Epcot. There is even a neat little river ride that goes right in front of this pyramid and you get to chase down Donald as he runs through Mexico or you can just eat here in front of the pyramid and volcano (plus it is air conditioned). When you leave the Aztec pyramid, it is hard not to look back and wonder how so much was fit into that pyramid. It just doesn't look big enough. But hey! That is the magic of Disney!

Obama and Greek Mythology?

O.K., I haven't been posting up as much as I started, but with school starting up, I've been a little more busy than normal. So, while you wait to be stunned by another spectacular blog entry, I leave you with this that I found in the news:

Obama Speech Stage Resembles Ancient Greek Temple
August 26, 2008

DENVER (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

There is more to the article (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=5660266), but that is the only thing they say about the Greek temple. The rest is just politics. I'm wondering if I can get a mini version of that temple facade and put it in my classroom, maybe with a platform so that I am looking down on my students from on high. Hmmm....

Disney Mythology Part 1

O.K. - While at Disney, I saw a few things mythology oriented (besides from the Hercules movie, which was pretty much absent from the park), so, having a camera in hand (actually two), I snapped a few photos. Here is the mythology I found in the Magic Kingdom Electro Spectacular Parade, which had a mythology selection of floats (I think because of Phantasia, but it's been a while since I saw that movie):

Dionysus (I wonder who picked him to celebrate at a kids theme park??? I'm sure it has something to do with the parents who surely need some of his comfort after a few days at Disney with kids! - Of course, famous Christian writer, C. S. Lewis, also puts Dionysus in his Narnia books, which are a Christian allegory. What a strange god to be so immoral yet so accepted in society. I'll have to write a post later on how accepted his worship was in the old days.)

When this went by I thought it was Apollo, but on second look, it looks more female to me, so I'm going to assume that it is Artemis.

Hard to see in this photo, but it is horses coming out of water, made from Poseidon.

Another myth I found out during this parade was the myth that American tourist are rude. I say this because it is not just Americans that can claim this rude tag as I encountered rude people of many nationalities.

I have a few more pictures that I want to go into detail about, but before I do, I want to leave you with this one. I found this outside of the Mexico building in Epcot. I am pretty sure it was based on some Aztec or Mayan god or hero, but have not had the chance to research yet, so, if anyone out there has some Aztec or Mayan background and want to put forward your guesses, then by all means, please comment!

Giants, Monsters,and Dragons - Oh My!

My first week of vacation was at the beach. I love the beach. It doesn't matter if it is rainy or cold, the beach is the place to be. While waiting for my wife to pick out a swim suit, I took my boys over to the Barnes and Noble and told them I'd get them a book. My eldest got a Pokemon book, the youngest got Five Chinese Brothers, which is perhaps the best book ever on Asian siblings with supernatural powers. Not to be left out, I wandered over to the mythology section and found Giants, Monsters, and Dragons by Carol Rose. What a fantastic book!

What it is is an encyclopedia of creatures that can be found in mythology and legend. There are many things that make this a great book to have in your collection of reference books:

• It is pretty comprehensive. It has well over 2,000 entries and gives most entries a fair amount of coverage.
• It covers many cultures. In fact, it covers Anatolia, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Roman, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Sumer, Zambia, Libya, South Africa, Tanzania, Sotho, Zambia, Dahomey, the Congo, Nigeria, Tschwi, Ashanti, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Burma, Canada (Canadian mythology - now there's something I've overlooked), the Caribbean, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam, Venezuela, China, Czech, Denmark, Croatian, Slav, Serbian, Bosnian, Romanian, England, Estonia, Medieval Europe, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Indonesia, Ireland, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lapp, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Cook Islands, Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti, Portugal, Russia, Ukraine, Siberia, Norway, Sweden, Scotland, Basque, Switzerland, Thailand, Native American, and other American. If a particular culture is not mentioned, I must have over looked it. If you want to hear about a particular one, leave a comment and I'll pick a monster from that area for a post.
• It has an incredible index. The book is set up in alphabetical order, so if you knew a particular monster by name, you could just look it up. You can look up creatures by nationality. You can look up creatures by type. You can look up creatures by what they are associated with (water, end of time, etc.).
• It is heavily documented. Carol Rose used 189 different sources to find her information and gives them all credit if you want to read more.

The only thing I could say that would make this a better book would be to have more illustrations of creatures.

I give it a 4.5 lightning bolts out of five.

So now if someone mentions a Gaki to me, I'll be able to know that it is a Japanese demon with a huge red or green belly, a horse head, three eyes, huge horns and claws, and is always tormented by hunger and thirst. And I know how to defeat it. That's pretty handy information.

Olympic Mythology

I could do a post with the history of the Olympics from a mythology viewpoint...but I'm not. There are two reasons. First, most of us already know that Hercules started the first Olympics and that it gets its name from Mt. Olympus, where Hercules held the games to honor the gods. The second reason is I'm tired (and lazy). When I came back from vacation, I was beat and since my summer was coming to a close, I worked as hard as I could to finish all summer projects. Now my deck is finished (did it myself) and my wife and I sat up late tiling the kitchen wall. I didn't want to keep neglecting the blog here, so I did a quick search on Google news for mythology.

What I found was an article from the Delco Times about Micheal Phelps. The guy is amazing and if you have not been watching the Olympics, you've missed out. The article compared his water control ability to Poseidon's. At any minute we can expect swift retribution against the writer. As we all know from mythology, nobody's life is worth much after you compare a mere mortal to a god. It also stated in the article that Phelps should be considered the 13th Olympian. So we have a nice little mythology allusion going on there.

For those of you that have been living under a rock, Phelp's big deal is that he won seven gold medals in this Olympics. One of his first ones was in a dynamite relay where the anchor really poured it on to come from behind and beat the French (a nice touch after they talked trash to the newspapers about how they were going to smash the Americans). The big number 7 was last night where he came from behind and out touched a guy by one one hundredth of a second. Being a former swimmer and current swim coach, it has been great watching him perform these feats.

The news article went on to point out that only one other person has done this - Mark Spitz. Spitz has always been the top dog to me and all other swimmers when I was growing up. The tying of this record (and the possible breaking of it tonight) is something that was pretty much considered impossible. One other guy tried a few Olympics back and (only) got seven medals - not all gold. The media made a big deal about this guy (Matt Biondi) at the, but when he didn't get all gold, they dropped him. The media goes on about Phelps - and he truly is amazing, but everyone has forgotten one thing. Spitz's record may be tied, but he still has one thing Phelps has not done. When Spitz got his seven gold medals, he also set seven world records doing it. Phelps (slacker that he is) only got six. :)

The Perseids

Well, I'm back from a week at the beach and a week at Disney World and I am tired! So I'll give a short one today and then give some mythology that I found while on vacation (yes, I am so the nerd that spent part of my vacation looking for mythology).

For the next few nights, there is a meteor shower going on. It should have about 90 shooting stars an hour at its peak on August 12th about 2:00 in the morning. The closer to dawn, the brighter these will be. Now, you don't have to be awake at 2:00 in the morning to get a chance to see shooting stars, that is just when they peak. You can go out after dark and expect to see some. You also don't have to wait until August 12th. For the next several days you'll have good viewing.

How does this relate to mythology? Well, they are called the Perseids because they radiate from the constellation Perseus, our hero from Clash of the Titans (yes, yes, I know - cheesy movie that gets pretty much everything wrong). You don't need to find Perseus to see these, either. Just look up.

Happy hunting - see you soon.